Rocky S2V have come up with some great, high-end adventure clothing and footwear gear designed to stand up to the harshest of weather conditions.
As a bonus accessory to their clothing and footwear range, they came up with a survival grenade which is basically made up of a few hard-to-improvise, survival items wrapped in about 3 meters of paracord that you can clip to your belt or pack using the supplied carabiner. It also comes with a cardboard sleeve that houses a Survival Priorities Guide by Mountain Shepherd Wilderness Survival School.
About 3 meters of paracord make up the tightly woven body of the Rocky S2V Survival Grenade.
It took about a minute for me to un-wrap the paracord to remove the contents inside. I really wanted to know if this was real 550 paracord, so I took it apart and found that this is not the regular 7 strands with 2 yarns per strand type, but instead had 5 strands with 3 yarns per strand. So, it is real paracord, but not the standard type. With the 5 inner strands removed, this survival grenade contains up to 18 meters of usable cordage including the outer casing.
Inside the tightly woven paracord grenade shape is a small aluminium foil bundle containing a scalpel, a ferrocerium rod almost 5 cm long, some jute twine tinder, 2 metres of aluminium snare wire, a large sewing needle, 2 split shot fishing weights, 1 small and 1 large fishing hook and a 30 by 30 cm square of thick heavy duty aluminium foil.
The foil containing all these items is very thin, and when un-wrapping it, I put a large hole in the side.
This is really no big deal as this piece of foil can be still used as a signaling device, fishing lure, to keep tinder dry and a multitude of other uses. Even if you could get this foil off without putting any holes in it, I would not recommend using it to form a cup to boil water in as it is too thin for this purpose. The rolled up piece of foil, though, is a whole lot thicker and stronger and can be used to form a makeshift cup for boiling water to purify. Boil water for at least 1 minute at sea level and at least 5 minutes at higher altitudes.
The scalpel is extremely sharp and could come in handy for skinning game, gutting fish, cutting the cord and other projects that require the use of an edged tool. This little blade can also be lashed to a stick for a little more control and leverage.
Since fire is so essential in a survival situation, this kit contains a small ferrocerium rod that is nearly 5 centimeters long and a small bundle of jute fibers which is enough to light around 2 fires with.
There is no obvious striker in this kit other than the scalpel, so I tried to use the back of the blade to strike the Ferro rod and try to light the tinder. The smooth spine of the scalpel was inadequate to produce any useful sparks, and since I did not want to ruin the edge of the scalpel, I had to get creative. I took a hard stone and rubbed the spine of the scalpel on it until I got a fairly sharp edge, and with the sharpened spine of the scalpel, I was able to produce some sparks that lit the jute tinder. Of course, after scraping the black protective coating off, it only took 2 strikes to get the tinder lit.
Food is not really a top priority in a survival situation, but this kit contains 2 metres of strong yet flexible aluminium snare wire and some basic fishing gear. The wire has a multitude of uses from making snares and trip wires to repairs and a handle for a makeshift aluminium foil cup. Since there is no fishing line in this kit, the inner strands of the paracord will do just fine as fishing line to use with the hooks and sinkers. Also, remember that a straightened fish hook can also be used as an improvised sewing needle.
The shelter is your top priority in a survival situation, and clothing is your first line of defense against the elements, so I was quite pleased to see a large heavy duty sewing needle in this kit. There is no sewing thread, but the inner strands of paracord make an excellent waterproof thread which you can use to repair damaged tents, clothing sleeping bags and anything else that can be stitched.
Then there is the survival guide which is housed in a pretty wonky cardboard pouch. It’s not waterproof and the first thing that’s going to happen to it is that it’s going to get pretty drenched in the first shower you take it out into. The guide does have some good survival information but the rest is just wasted real estate jam-packed with some beautiful scenery and some interesting graphic design. So for those who have little survival experience, honestly I think this survival guide is rather inadequate.
Once I had taken the kit apart and tested all the items, there were no instructions on how to put it back together, so I simply made myself a paracord bracelet with the paracord. Check it out in this image below.
rocky4It would be a little bit unfair to rate this kit because it all depends on your skill level. If you have very little, or no survival skills, and all you had was this kit, you might survive if you had the will and brains to, but I would recommend that you buy a more comprehensive survival kit like the Uncharted Supply Emergency Survival Backpack. If you have basic survival skills, and can easily Improvise, Adapt and Overcome problems, then I would recommend that you buy this, clip it on your pack or person and hope you never need to use it, but as we always say, it is all about being prepared.